


Every Scar A Story

by prototyping



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Gen, Prompt Fic, TalesWhumpWeek, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 16:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16122449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prototyping/pseuds/prototyping
Summary: He would finish what he’d started and expect nothing in return. [Yuri, Estelle.]Done for the prompt “deprived” in the TalesWhumpWeek challenge on tumblr.





	Every Scar A Story

At the end, he hadn’t fought back. Not really.

As he watched her retreat a step, gathering her bearings and readjusting her center, her hilt rotating in her thin fingers as she prepared for another attack, Yuri let his own sword fall to his side. He didn’t prepare for a parry or a counter or a sidestep. This time, minutes into their fight and unscathed but _tired_ , more exhausted inside and out than he could ever remember feeling, he only waited.

He waited for her to step forward, into arm’s reach.

He waited for her to stab, predictably, for his center.

He waited until the last possible moment, when she was too close and too far into the thrust to pull away.

His free hand moved with calculated precision, snapping up and out and closing tight around her blade. Immediately he felt the hot burn of steel slicing over and through his skin, opening his palm and the insides of his fingers, and her sword was streaked crimson when it pushed on through his fist.

But his grapple wasn’t meant to _stop_ her attack. It was to redirect it.

It felt like a punch to his left shoulder. There was more strength in the blow than expected and Yuri staggered back a step, his balance teetering dangerously, but he dug in his heels and stayed upright. In the same motion his right hand moved in a flash, _with_ a flash, and he forced himself to meet Estellise’s empty eyes as her body gave a violent shudder.

For a moment there was only silence—the deepest, heaviest, most suffocating silence he had ever heard, pressing hard against his ears and weighing down on his shoulders until his head rang and his bones ached. Not only their battle, but the world around them seemed to have frozen as well, caught mid-breath in equal shock and disgust at the unthinkable crime taking place on its soil.

Hot blood ran down his arm both ways now. He didn’t have to look to know the same dark color was blossoming on the front and back of her dress, spreading much more quickly than his own stains.

Her eyes were no longer empty. At this proximity he could see them widen a fraction—her only display of expression so far.

For a moment the two of them stood locked in place, suspended on one another’s blades, arms outstretched in an obscene mockery of an embrace that would never come to pass.

She weakened first. Her grip loosened, her body swayed, her knees gave. Only then did Yuri move as well, withdrawing his blade in one smooth motion—and letting go at the end of it, sending his sword clattering behind him, discarded and forgotten. He caught her as she fell, teeth gritted against the pain that finally flared in his left arm. He lowered her slowly and gently, as if it would make a difference, kneeling with almost the entirety of her weight in his arms.

(His wounds would scar, and those scars, he would think later, were fitting. Scars to mark his dirty hands for what they were. Scars to remind him of what she suffered, even if his injuries were a poor, pathetic comparison.)

If there was still a shred of optimism in him somewhere, a vain—selfish—hope that there would be at least a hint of closure to this tragedy, something to consult later on for even a moment’s peace of mind, it was disappointed. No light of recognition returned to Estelle’s gaze; there was no sign that even a mortal injury had freed her from her cruel trance, no familiar glimpse of her personality. There weren’t even any parting words. Her eyes closed and didn’t open again.

Her shallow breaths went on a while longer and again Yuri waited. He watched the rise and fall of her chest gradually slow. He watched the remaining color drain from her face. He watched that crimson stain grow and grow until its heat touched his chest and even then continued to spread.

He waited all the while.

He would finish what he’d started and expect nothing in return.


End file.
